TiVo Case Synopsis

Problems & Issues with TIVO:

1. TiVo has brand equity and maintains good customer relationship management, but still the
market growth of TiVo is very low.
2. The brand awareness of TiVo isn’t widespread
3. The company is in loss since its inception.
4. The salespersons aren’t comfortable and sure while demoing the products to the customers.
5. Direct competition from Replay TV as they charge no service fee, ads can be skipped quickly,
and Microsoft Ultimate TV

Recommendations:

 TiVo’s partnership with Sony and Philips isn’t helping the company creating more awareness
as a brand. They should not rely on Sony and Philips for improving their brand image. TiVo
needs to position itself as a standalone brand and promote themselves.
 TiVo products are difficult to use for nonusers, and, they’re not user friendly much. The
salespersons can’t even operate the products well enough. This makes it difficult for TiVo to
be sold as a product in those stores. TiVo needs to train the salespersons and provide a catalog
with each of their products showing the usability of the product in easy steps.
 TiVo needs to promote the positives and highlights of their products. For instance, the
customers and the potential customers should be known that TiVo box enables viewers to
pause and record a show so that they can never miss it and watch it in their own convenient
time.
 TiVo should partner with AT&T and Direct TV in order to enter a larger market and increase
sales.
 TiVo, priced at $999, is expensive as a product compared to their competitors. They should
price their products in par or slightly higher than competitor’s in order to maintain the
competitive advantage. / price range of up to $400 needs be opted by TiVo as a price scheme.
 Currently there are 102 million TV watchers. However, TiVo has a total number of subscribers
of 42000. If they lower their price, there’s a high chance for the number of sales to increase
and the market of TiVo will expand.

Lead Questions

1. Analyse the situation from the consumer’s standpoint. What is TiVo? What factors facilitate
its adoption? What factors make adoption difficult? Who is TiVo best suited for?

- TiVo is a form of television recording technology used to record shows based on the user’s
preferences. It can store a vast amount of recorded shows and play them back without
the interruption of commercials. It has added features such as pause and fast-forward,
which can enhance and improve the television viewing pleasure of the consumer.

The major factor that can facilitate adoption of TiVo is the ability to watch shows when
you want them, not when they are aired. This enable the viewer to watch several of their
favourite shows all on Thursday nights when they had additional time instead of missing
shows that aired on Tuesday because they worked late or had something else going on.
2. Now adopt the standpoint of the networks, the advertisers and the cable/satellite companies:
What do they want TiVo to be? Thinking about the competition: What are Microsoft’s
potential strengths and weaknesses in this market?
- For the TV Networks, advertising companies who utilize cable TV to promote their
products and services TiVo should be utilized as a complementary device that can help
promote business the same as commercials do with traditional TV. They do not want TiVo
to become a threat and deter or undercut business they currently receive with the use of
commercials. I feel the Networks should be most appreciative of TiVo because it will
enable viewers to tune into shows they offer more regularly on their own schedules. If the
programs are being watched that is the main concern for the network and its ratings. For
the basic cable and satellite companies this would also work as a complimentary service
to the consumer. For the larger companies like I mentioned above such as Comcast, TiVo
is a competitor, offering a similar DVR service for their premium cable customers. At the
time of the article Replay TV was the biggest competitor. Other completion for TiVo is the
other DRV services being offered from a variety of different sources.
- Microsoft has a Brand Image and that is leveraged to Ultimate TV. They have the financial
upper hand and can invest more in R&D without worrying about revenue. They have the
Speed of the market as already TiVo has created the market. And they have awareness
about the product so they can develop it more speedily.

3. How could you describe and characterize TiVo’s action plan as given at the end of the case?
How do you evaluate the planned communication campaign? Does your situation analysis
suggest an alternative?
- TiVo has a first mover advantage over the competitors. Also, it has disadvantages of its
own because of that. It should collaborate with the powerful players and work upon the
pricing which is quite costly. Invest in educating the customers. As even the salesperson
was having difficulty in demoing the product, TiVo should make them learn the product
very well. They can advertise on TV itself with professionals. As they have their own OS,
TiVo should make use of it for optimizing the UI and UX for the customer’s ease of use.